Introduction
This report seeks to answer the question: Which factors drive the population development in rural communities in Denmark? The severe population declines in rural communities in recent decades provide the basic background for the report. In addition, earlier studies have been based on case studies, whereas this report is based on a national survey.
Data
The report relies on data obtained from Statistics Denmark and data from the questionnaire survey Danish Rural-Urban Barometer (DRUB), which was carried out in the end of 2011. Data are available for 943 out of a total of about 2,200 Danish parishes. Analyses were performed collectively and separately for four types of parishes as defined by the Danish Ministry of Housing, Urban and Rural Affairs (2013): peripheral rural parishes (n = 311), city-near rural parishes (n = 203), peripheral urban parishes (n = 118), and city parishes (n = 311).
Research questions
The report examines how much parish-specific resources can explain the population development in rural parishes when adjusted for the population trend. The report speaks of parish-specific resources in terms of parish-specific capitals. Concretely, the report examines whether the population development from January 1 2012 to January 1 2014 can be explained by the population trend and the initial stocks as of January 1 2012 of the following forms of capital: nature capital, physical capital, economic capital, human capital, social capital, and symbolic capital. The population trend is measured by using two variables: parish size (measured by population density) and the population development in the previous two-year period from January 1 2010 to January 1 2012.
Results
When pooling the two types of rural parishes into one group, multiple regression analyses show that the following factors are positively related to the population development in rural parishes:
- Parish size (measured by population density)
- Economic capital (measured by average income in the parish)
- Human capital (measured by the share people aged 18-39 in the parish)
Statistically, parish size had the biggest importance of the three factors. The result for parish size indicates that bigger rural parishes get bigger and smaller rural parishes get smaller. The result for economic capital indicates that high parish income generates activity in the parish. That human capital in the form of having a young population is linked to population growth is hardly surprising since this group of people constitutes the reproductive part of the population. Nature capital and social capital (the latter measured by the strength of solidarity among community members) were not found to have an effect on the population development in rural parishes. In-migrants to rural communities often mention nature and the solidarity among community members as reasons to move to rural communities (Johansen & Thuesen, 2011; Nørgaard et al., 2010). This report, however, indicates that these features of rural life are not powerful enough to pull the general population development in a positive direction. Physical capital measured by the proximity to various buildings such as a school and a grocery shop and other physical infrastructure such as a motorway was not found to be significantly related to the population development of rural parishes. Human capital in the form of the education level of the parish and symbolic capital as measured by the perceived parish image among people from outside the parish were also not found to have a statistically significant impact on the population development in rural parishes.
The explanatory factors behind the population development in urban parishes turned out to be almost the same as the explanatory factors behind the population development in rural parishes. In turn, the report finds the explanatory factors behind the population development in urban parishes to be the population trend, economic capital, and human capital (share of people aged 18-39). The trend, i.e. the population development in the previous two-year period, was the most important factor, whereas human capital (share of people aged 18-39) had a bigger importance than economic capital.
Overall conclusion
An overall conclusion of the report is that the population development in rural parishes (as well as in urban parishes) especially is influenced by a general urbanisation trend – an urbanisation trend that has existed in the Danish society ever since 1801 (Matthiessen, 1985; Sørensen, 2014). Economically, the urbanisation trend within societies is generally explained by agglomeration benefits or, using another term, benefits from economies of scale. In the private sector, these scale benefits relate to, for example, transportation costs which are lowered when enterprises on the one hand and consumers and employees on the other hand localise in closer proximity to one another. In the public sector, economies of scale relate to the possibility of achieving higher cost efficiency per inhabitant in densely populated areas. As such, the general urbanisation trend can be viewed as an exogenous factor, which the single parish has little influence on.
The urbanisation trend in Danish rural parishes is evidenced by big parishes getting bigger and small parishes getting smaller. Put differently, the evidence shows that while most rural parishes experience population decline, other rural parishes experience population growth, and the population growth takes place in the parishes that are already biggest, that is, most densely populated. The parish-specific resources thus play a lesser role for the population development in rural parishes than the general trends towards agglomeration. The report, however, shows that especially human resources in form of having a young population can have a positive effect on the population development in rural parishes, and this regardless of whether the rural parish lies on the good or the bad side of the urbanisation trend.
Policy implications
One recommendation for policy could therefore be to launch initiatives in rural parishes that will attract the younger part of the population. Moreover, politicians may consider whether it makes sense to focus on the biggest rural parishes, that is, the most densely populated. Considerations of this kind has been voiced before by different parties (see e.g. DR Østjylland, 2013; Kristeligt Dagblad, 2013), but at the end of the day this is of course a political balancing between short-term and long-term considerations.